214: 4 Realities of Blogging All Bloggers Need to Talk About

4 Difficult Realities All Bloggers Face During a conference last year I was invited to have dinner with three other bloggers who had all been blogging for 5-10 years and were now doing it full-time. It was a fun dinner, and we covered a lot of ground in terms of conversation. But during dessert the conversation got a little deeper as one of them began to share how they were struggling with their blog. On their surface, their blogging was going okay. They had a great readership, and the content they were putting out was going well. But on the inside they felt disillusioned. And as they continued their story, I looked around the table and saw a lot of nodding going on. Their story was resonating with us all. I related to it a lot. Blogging can be hard sometimes, and it's to become disillusioned. As a blogger I’ve heard people rave about my, blog with comments like: "You’re so prolific!" "How do you stay so productive?" "How did you write that way?" But on the inside I’ve wondered why they can’t see what a grind and a struggle blogging can be. This podcast is largely positive and constructive about how to build a profitable blog. But after reflecting on this conversation from last year it struck me that while I often talk up blogging, and share the benefits of doing it and the tactics of building profit, it may be worth acknowledging some of the hard stuff we face as content creators. So in today's episode I want to talk about four realities of blogging that many of us bloggers don't always share. Part of why I'm doing it is to give you a realistic insight into the life of a blogger. But I also think it’s important for us bloggers to realise that we're not alone in facing some of these things. Being a little vulnerable with each other during that conversation last year seemed to lift our spirits a little. And out of the conversation came encouragement to keep at it. So today I present four things about blogging that are hard. By no means is it a definitive list - I could probably come up with a lot more for a part two - but I hope it's helpful. Join our Facebook group Further Listening on 4 Realities of Blogging All Bloggers Need To Talk About 167: My Million Dollar Blog Post (and How Procrastination Almost Stopped me Writing It) Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there, and welcome to Episode 214 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, podcast, events, job board, and series of ebooks all designed to help you to grow a profitable blog. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger at problogger.com. In today’s episode, I wanna do something a little bit different. Last year, I was at a conference and was invited to have dinner with three other bloggers. They were bloggers who had all been blogging for 5 to 10 years, they were all full time at what they do. Relatively successful bloggers. It was a fun dinner; we laughed, we joked around, it was fairly lighthearted for the main. We covered a lot of ground in terms of our conversation. Somewhere around the time that dessert was served, the conversation got a little bit deeper as one of our dinner party began to share that they were struggling with their blog. On the surface, this particular blogger’s blog was going okay; they had a great readership, they were producing lots of content, they had built a team, they had a beautiful design. It was all going well on the outside, but on the inside the blogger was feeling disillusioned. As the blogger shared, I looked around the table and I saw that we were all nodding at the story. The story that the blog was telling was resonating with us all. I personally related a lot. There are times in blogging where it’s hard. There are times where it’s easy to get disillusioned.